Monday, 14 November 2011

The rules are being broken all over the place within Bits & Bob's today :D Not only are biscuits the focal point of the post again, but some of them don't contain chocolate, whilst others have been brought in from as far away as Australia. How can I justify this you ask? Well all of them have been requested by readers in the last twelve months. If the demand is there it can't be ignored. On to the reviews ...------Burton's Toffee Dodgers Burton's Toffee DodgersKcal 83 Fat 3.0g Fat(sats) 2.0g Carbs 6.0g (per biscuits)

Speaking as someone who really dislikes normal Jammie Dodgers (ghastly sweet things!) I wasn't all that motivated to seek these out despite the several recommendations sent my way through my 'Snack of the Week' weekend posts. When I saw them priced at just £0.54p in my local Tesco though, it seemed like a good time to pull the trigger so a pack finally made it in to my basket this past week.

In the 'no s*** Sherlock' moment of the week I can reveal that these were of course the biscuits that I referred to above as not containing any chocolate. These came billed as 'Chewy toffee splodged at between two toffee flavour shortcake biscuits'. Packaging and presentation wise I was impressed with these - especially the caramel like scents which were very appetising it has to be said. The surprising impressiveness continued when it came to the taste, where the the toffee filling was a greater entity than just the sickly sweet substance I expected it to be. Indeed, the toffee had a lick of butter amongst it's brown sugar flavours, and this played nicely alongside the buttery, salty emphasis established by the outer shortbread biscuit. I'm as surprised as anyone to be writing this, but I would buy these again :D You guys must know what you are talking about! Good recommendations guys and girls!

The amount of requests I received to review these Arnott's Tim Tam Fingers finally hit a breaking a point, and for the sake of my inbox I thought best get a review done. For those not familiar, Tim Tams are chocolate biscuits made by Arnott's in Australia. Arnott's claim to sell over 35 million packs a year ... that's 400 million biscuits ... which eqcuates to 1.7 packs per Australian citizen ... that's a lot of biscuits huh!? (thanks WIKI - See HERE).

Tim Tam biscuits comprise of three major layers - an outer coating of milk chocolate, a layer of milk chocolate cream, all sandwiched between two chocolate biscuits. sound familiar UK folk!? Well yes of course it does ... it sounds almost entirely like the McVitie's Penguin bar (See Here). Whilst it sounds like exactly the same proposition, I have to concede that our Aussie friends have a far superior product. Whilst the chocolate flavours aren't anything special I still found the chocolate hit to be far greater in strength than in the Penguin bar. Additionally the inner chocolate cream tasted of more than simply sugar, and had a creamier taste that complimented the salt licked shortbread like biscuit pieces very nicely indeed. Having now tasted these, I much better understand the cult following they have. The Aussies may have the better biscuits, but we have the Ashes :D Just you remember that chaps :D

For a part of the portfolio that had been largely ignored for years, there has been quite a bit of new product development for Cadbury Fingers in the last year. Already within the last year we have seen the launch of the Toffee Crunch (See HERE) and the Halloween limited edition Freaky Fingers (See HERE). As if these weren't enough for you guys already, Cadbury have most recently launched these new 'Fabulous Fingers'.

What makes these so Fabulous then!? The promise of 'crisp chocolate flavoured biscuits covered in milk chocolate and white chocolate' is supposed to do the trick. I recently decided to see whether or not this was the case or not having seen them on a BOGOF £1.99 deal. Straight from the pack they appeared no different to usual milk chocolate fingers, though once snapped in half there was an obvious milk and white layering system. Due to the thinness of both of these layers I wasn't expecting much differentiation from the norm, however to my pleasant surprise these definitely had a greater milkier, creamy emphasis than normal. I wouldn't go as far as saying the difference was hugely significant, but I enjoyed these for what they were and would buy them again over the originals.

Last up today we have the two remaining flavours of McVitie's Quirks that I was yet to review. After a less than inspiring showing from the Choc Hazelnut flavour (See HERE) back in August, I wasn't overly keen on trying these Chocolate or Double Chocolate variants. A combination of reader requests and £1.00 Tesco deals made me think otherwise :D

In terms of looks I was still pretty unexcited by both these flavours. The Double Choc was a little more interesting looking out the two, however both were still by and large underwhelming aesthetically. Ask any chocolate lover whether they are going to like a product named 'chocolate' or 'Double Choc' more and I think the answer you would get would be pretty straight forward everytime. It will come as no get surprise to you then that it was indeed the Double Choc variant they I preferred. The added cocoa to the biscuit gave it a creamier taste which essentially gave greater depth and chocolate flavour volume. The shortbread style biscuit of the standard chocolate flavour was fair, but as experienced before not anything worth going out your way to try. I wouldn't recommend them but if you are going to try one it would be the Double Choc.